An Owl's Whisper (34 page)

Eva heard the sound of giggling and spun around. Across the way, under a streetlamp, a young couple was watching her, amused. Eva pointed at them and screamed, “Get out. Leave us alone.” She threw a stone in their direction, and they strolled off , laughing, into the night.

Eva turned back to the iron. She caressed it. Awaiting a warm embrace. Absolution.

None came.

Eva crumpled to the ground. Lying at the
panneau’s
foot, she peered up to the light, and her eyes filled with tears. “Can’t you see how I need you?”

She lay there, frozen for a moment. Then she jerked away from the metalwork and scrambled to her feet. “What reply is that?” She clenched her fists. “A daughter’s plea means nothing?” Eyes wide, she threw herself at the
panneau
and shook it until it clattered. Over the sound she howled, “I’m glad they hanged you.” Then her fury dissolved in sobs.

Eva scrambled away from the
panneau
. Like it was suddenly fearsome. She ran up the shadowy street toward the seedy Bohemian section, only stopping when she found a street café called
Osiris Blanc
. A waiter with a long, starched apron, gartered shirt sleeves, garish white skin, and oiled black hair leaned on the outdoor bar, shuffling a stack of coins. At one of the tables along the street a trio of drunks argued loudly. Out of the shadows shambled an old woman wearing a grimy, pink satin gown and ballet slippers. On her wrist was an ancient nosegay of roses dry and gray as wood ash. Her head was crowned with a garland of feathers and her lips were smeared scarlet. Followed by an arthritic, gray-faced mutt, she moved ethereally, picking up cigarette butts from ashtrays and off the sidewalk, placing them reverently in a rusty biscuit tin. An accordion player sat at the bar making music so quirky, so nightmarish, so odd you couldn’t say if it was well-played or not. The place was what Eva wanted.

She took a small, round table, away from the drunks. She sipped a cognac and watched the old woman slice the paper of her cigarette butts with a razor blade. The faded dame tamped the loose tobacco into a pipe and smoked, her dog sleeping at her feet. Eva had another cognac.

A young man, good looking but unkempt and ragged, slinked up to Eva’s table. He leaned on the back of a chair. “My name’s Herve. You’re awfully quiet. Have a name?”

Eva said nothing.

Herve shrugged. “You’re drinking alone, and I’m broke. It’s a pity.”

Raising two fingers, she ordered them both drinks.

Herve slipped into a chair and pulled out a crumpled pack of Gitanes. He offered one to Eva. She waved it off. He licked the cigarette from end to end, then lit up and took a deep drag. “You have a twin, you know.”

Eva said nothing.

“First saw her when I was fifteen. In the Louvre. She lives there.” He stroked his lip with his thumb. “Name’s Giovanna. Know her?”

Eva looked off to the side.

“A bit older than you.” One-sided conversations didn’t seem to bother Herve. The waiter brought the cognacs. Herve raised his glass. “
A santé
.” He took a pull of the brandy. “Much older really. Four hundred years. Botticelli’s Giovanna? The angelic
demoiselle
with the upturned eyes in his fresco,
Giovanna Tornabuoni riceve le Virtù
? In the Louvre? You know?”

Eva bit her lip. She looked like she wanted to leave.

“First time I saw her, I was bewitched.” Herve drew hard on his Git. “So bewitched, I suppose, that I’ve never done anything with my life.” He shuddered and blew a stream of smoke skyward. “Anything would be inferior, second-rate, nothing, next to what Botticelli did.” He crossed his arms tightly and rocked back and forth in his chair. “Can you believe it?” He stopped rocking and smiled weakly. “Ah, I go on too much. It’s just that you look so like her.” He finished his brandy. “Will we have another?”

Eva slammed her glass down. “We will go sin. Will you sin with me? You live nearby?”

Herve drew back. “Yes,” he stammered. “Sin? You mean fuck? I’m not so used to a country girl’s bluntness.”

“I am not a country girl—I’m Belgian. And call it what you will. For me, what matters is the sin. So, yes, you want to sin, or yes, you have a place nearby?”

“You understand I have no money?”

“I’m not a prostitute. I just want to sin and you’ll do for that. Where do you stay?”

“There.” He pointed. “
Rue Steinkerque
. Very close.”

Eva left money for the drinks, and they walked in silence the three blocks to Herve’s shabby building.

“It’s here,” Herve said, directing Eva up the front steps, past the wino sleeping there. They reached the stairway inside. “The toilet’s there.” He pointed down the first floor hallway. “I’m on the third level.”

Eva felt the creaking staircase sway as they climbed. With each step the temperature rose. By floor three the air was stifling. Herve reached up to the top of the doorframe, fumbling for the key. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. He stood back for Eva to enter.

The room’s heat and its odor smacked Eva as she crossed the threshold. She was glad for its unpleasantness. It took only a moment to survey the spare, single room flat. Luminous moonlight streamed in through a window and cast a silver swath across the dark floor. To the left was a narrow bed, its yellowed sheet and pillow a jumble on the mattress. Next to the bed, newspapers lay strewn on the floor. To the right, a shipping crate served as a table. On it was a half-eaten plate of pasta and tomato sauce. A fork remained in the food. Next to the food was a hot plate with a teakettle and a half-full bottle of wine topped with a greasy, green glass.

A gray cat lay motionless on the windowsill, eying Eva. It reminded her of the way
Madame
Hélène’s cat watched Stanley and her when they’d pass it, going to their room above
du Point de Vue
. She stomped her foot at the animal. “Get it out of here.”

Herve walked toward the cat, clapping his hands gently. “Go to the roof now, Noel. Go find your dinner.”

The cat rose, stretched defiantly, and padded off along a ledge outside.

He picked up the newspapers and began to clear the table.

“Don’t bother,” Eva said.

When Herve looked back, she’d already undone the buttons on the front of her dress. Eva stepped out of it and laid it on the chair. She kicked off her shoes. He watched, entranced, as she slipped off her camisole and her underpants. In the moonlight she stood, tall, slender, blond hair tumbling onto white shoulders.

“Giovanna!” Herve gasped. He hurriedly tore off his clothes, as if he feared he was dreaming and wanted to make his love before he awoke.

Eva shook the sheet and spread it over the bed. Then she lay down on it and moved her legs apart. “Now come.”

Herve knelt between Eva’s legs, and he bent down and kissed her belly, down to her pubes. But Eva took his head in her hands and pulled him up. “I don’t want pleasure.” She held him close, so close she wouldn’t see his face, and she was frantic, wanting only to sin. To sin quickly. Sin quickly and be done with it.

When he’d spent himself, Eva got up and began dressing. On the bed, Herve cried. “Strange, the tears,” he said. “I don’t even know if they are joy—I’ve finally had my moment with you—or sorrow—my moment is over.”

When she was dressed, Eva walked to the door without a word. As she touched the knob, Herve called, “Wait. Just one question. Why?”

Eva froze. Without looking back, she said, “
Peccavi
—I have sinned,” and dashed out.

She ran down
Rue Steinkerque
, back toward
Osiris Blanc
. Ran like a doe chased by wolves. She darted into the shadows of an alley and crashed into a trashcan obscured in the darkness. Down she went. With the clatter, a light came on and a man gawked from a window above, but Eva didn’t care. Hands on her knees, she panted like exhausted prey. She snarled, “Now we’re even, good Mother.” Glaring at the heavens, she howled, “Are you happy?”

The man in the window bellowed, “Lunatic, take your damn racket somewhere else,” punctuating it by slamming the window shut and snapping its tattered shade down.

Eva fell to her knees and retched until she felt torn inside-out. .

When she got back to the café, a taxi was idling there. The driver sat behind the wheel, having a Pernod and arguing with the waiter about de Gaulle. Exhausted, Eva begged to be taken home. The driver finished his drink in a gulp and they were off. At the hotel, she had to wake
Madame
de Bœuf to get in. It was unpleasant, but Eva didn’t care. She just wanted her long, long night to be over.

Eva slept for what seemed only minutes. She woke having dreamed of sitting on a doctor’s exam table, wearing a muslin drape. A white-gowned surgeon came in. It was Stanley, but he made no sign of knowing her. As he studied her chart, she said, “Tell me what I want to hear.”

He lowered the chart. “Your lesion’s been burned out, cauterized. That’s what matters.” He looked at her. “Fire fights fire. New sin withers old.” He sounded dispassionate, but Eva saw tears of blood trail down his cheeks. He signed the chart and left.

Eva couldn’t stop the dream’s tumbling in her brain. Something told her Stanley had entwined his words with truth. Why else would he come to her?

After thirty minutes she knew she’d not get back to sleep. She went to the shabby bureau and eyed herself in the mirror. The woman peering back looked old. Gray. She poured water from the chipped pitcher into its basin and splashed her face. As she rubbed a lather from the block of yellow soap, her image in the mirror became indistinct. Scrubbing her hands, on and on like a surgeon does, she murmured, “Help me, Stanley. Give me your peace.”

As Eva moved her hands one over the other, they slipped easily with the creamy soap and the soft water, and she felt Stanley with her. She could hear him.
Last night you were burning bridges from a black past. Withering sin with sin. We’ll take whatever buries yesterday’s lesions. Whatever secures our future.
It’s so like him, she thought as his peace washed over her.

She lathered a sponge with the soap and scrubbed her face. Her stinging eyes reminded her of Stanley’s bloody tears. She whispered, “But darling, can I ignore what’s hidden in your sunny view? Ignore that I betrayed a mother? Betrayed you? As if betrayal weren’t important?”

She felt him smile. Felt him say,
You haven’t chosen to ignore it—I have.

Eva rinsed the soap from her face. In the mirror, she now looked alive. She dried herself with the tattered towel that hung from a nail on the bureau. She looked young again. To look like that for Stanley made her glad. She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling rested. “You’re right, Stanley. The lesion lies buried on
Rue Steinkerque
.”

Packing her suitcase in the morning, Eva realized even the sunniest view will have shadows. She asked her reflection in the mirror, “If black pasts are cancers, you can burn them out, bury them, but what’s to say they won’t return?”

She shuddered.

Two Hundred Twenty-five Pocahontases

In the morning, Eva paid her hotel bill and took a bus to the American Embassy. An MP with white helmet, belt and gloves directed her through a grand foyer to the open doors of the embassy ballroom. At a check-in table located just inside the door, two of the embassy staff greeted Eva, checked her name off their list, and handed her a packet of paperwork, a pencil, and a bottle of Pepsi Cola. She took an empty place at one table with seven other war brides chattering as they completed their forms.

A petite girl, stylish in a tight, pink and gray sweater and skirt ensemble, sat next to Eva. Her black hair was short with tight curls, and she had the longest eyelashes Eva had ever seen. “Hi, sweetie, I’m Marie. Practice the English with me,” she said, clicking her chewing gum.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Eva Chandler, coming here from near Liege.”

Marie leaned close to Eva. “I’m dying for a fucking cigarette,” she whispered. “Have a smoke with me!” From her purse she took a Gitane package—its baby blue color matched her mascara—and shook a cigarette out for Eva.

Eva stared for several seconds, as if mesmerized—or terrified—by what Marie offered. The blue of the Gitane package was what held her. That distinctive blue, the blue of the rumpled package of Gits she’d watched Herve fumble with at
Osiris Blanc.
Perhaps if she could just smoke one, it might be bridge burning. She took a breath and willed her hand to the cigarette rising from the blue pack.

Marie took herself one and tamped it on the table. She lit both. “I’m born Parisian. Now I trade clerking in Madame Cleo’s boutique of ladies’ hats for life on a grand farm of the cattles. Phillip, my man, said me his father’s grounds are vast as a barony, and someday it will be ours.” She arched her eyebrows and giggled. “He calls his place Wyoming. To what do you go, Eva?”

“My Stanley is a sometimes cowboy—and a sometimes shopkeeper. We’ll live in the district of Sandy Hills.”